


The truth is love ain't got no off switch

by ginkgofan



Category: Dirty Computer - Janelle Monáe (Music Video)
Genre: F/F, Implied Sexual Content, Post-Canon, can be read as Jane/Zen/Ché, mini flashbacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:47:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28143354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ginkgofan/pseuds/ginkgofan
Summary: “How did you remember me?” She whispers.“I don’t know,” Zen whispers back. “It was like you were always there, just beneath my skin, waiting for me to rediscover. The Nevermind is powerful, but… I think there are some things more powerful than that. Some things they don’t know how to take away.”Their arms around each other feel like a flimsy protection against the world, but they close their eyes and hold on anyway.
Relationships: Jane/Zen (Dirty Computer)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 15
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	The truth is love ain't got no off switch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [poppyseedheart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/poppyseedheart/gifts).



_This is not a memory._

Amber lights shifted over the empty stadium chairs of the absent audience. Jane stood alone on the stage, representing number 57821 in a sequence. She began the performance, part movement, part song, part spoken lines. She was building something that could not be taken or erased. She was building a story. Building memory over memory, not hoarding experience but sharing it, creating a voice in the flow of history link by link by link. This was a statement of conviction deep in what they called her code that could not be as easily overwritten as a memory. What was made into story could not be taken or erased, only shared from person to person, more potent than a computer virus. This was the visual manifestation of emotion.

This was art. Offstage, Zen switched off the camera and smiled.

***

The three former inmates of the House of the New Dawn travel first by foot, a slow six-legged collective compelled by some ceaseless inner force. They are not running away, they are simply moving forward. They are done being afraid. The promise of freedom is a greater motivator than fear. Jane and Zen hold Ché up between them and by the time they reach the road none of them stumble any longer. After bearing the burden of separation for so long, another person is the lightest weight to carry.

The road is a dusty river of possibility before them. Jane sticks out her thumb.

As hitchhikers, they are carried far away by the kindness of strangers and soon acquire their own transportation. The sterile House of the New Dawn falls farther and farther behind them with each mile the hovercar races over. 

They do not route their escape towards the desert. At first it made sense to aim for that vast expanse of space, to take refuge in how little exists out there, but Jane knows that very soon she will want to be with other people. Others branded as dirty computers, all gathered in the same place with the freedom to be exactly who they are. They don’t turn towards a city, though. Zen wants sky, as many stars as can possibly be seen, as many dazzling celestial patterns as she can drink down in one night of darkness. Ché maps out a mountain route that takes them through remote spaces under the vast expanse of open sky and ends at a town where he hopes they will find friendly faces, both old and new. They take a winding cliffside road, nearly swerving out over the thundering ocean below with each treacherous curve. Each time they only laugh harder, still high on the thrill of rebellious defiance. Jane doesn’t blast the radio, not yet. Soon they will have music enough, and time. Soon. The people they knew before are scattered now, but their connection is not broken. These are the people the world brands as dirty, but dirt is where flowers grow and together they could make a garden. The only true refuge is in community. They will find each other again, and together they will heal.

The first night, Jane pulls the hovercar some distance off the road and into a stand of trees. They turn off all the lights and all three climb into the back seat together. The night is clear and windy. Ché falls asleep almost immediately, exhausted. Zen stays awake longer, watching the patterns of leaves shift over the stars. Those little winking points of light are so far away and yet she feels they are almost too close to bear. She does not look away.

Jane is exhausted too, but sleep eludes her. She reaches out and turns Zen’s face towards her own.

“How did you remember me?” She whispers.

“I don’t know,” Zen whispers back. “It was like you were always there, just beneath my skin, waiting for me to rediscover. The Nevermind is powerful, but… I think there are some things more powerful than that. Some things they don’t know how to take away.”

Their arms around each other feel like a flimsy protection against the world, but they close their eyes and hold on anyway.

The town at the end of their journey is small but vibrant. A defiant sign by the highway leading into town declares: SURVEILLANCE DROID FREE ZONE

Beneath it someone has graffitied a cartoon surveillance droid being scrapped for spare parts. The sunset burnishes everything in warm tones of color, and Jane feels her heart unclench.

***

_This is more than a memory._

Jane’s hands massaged oil into Zen’s scalp in slow circles. She carefully tended each section of hair, gently working in moisture with her fingers before using the comb. She could see Zen’s smile in the mirror, reveling in their quiet intimacy.

This space was not for any audience, this was for them alone. Zen had concluded her film project earlier that day. What they chose to give the world, they had given, and now they had space to be generous with each other alone.

***

There are parties and dancing that night in the town of dirty computers, reveling under the stars. There is no one to stop them. Ché finds the old friends he hoped to find here, and they are lost in laughter and conversation long into the little hours of the morning. At last, nearly bathed in the light of dawn, Jane and Zen stumble back to the hotel room the three of them have claimed and are blissfully alone with each other.

Zen reaches out, present, here, now. Their fingers clasp together like shells sheltering the single animal of their hearts. The world is salt dissolved in endless emotion, but they are born to breathe it and it cannot drown them, only sustain. In this moment the only power in the world is what they give each other, and nothing else is greater.

They are used to gritty rooftops, other people’s couches, the sand of the shoreline. It feels so good to have this room now, all their own universe. This bed, a galaxy. Jane tips Zen lightly backward onto its surface, and loses herself in the taste of her skin, only to find herself again in each touch of Zen’s hands, her mouth, her legs wrapping around her and drawing her in. When her hand slides between her legs they are guided by more than the memory of each other’s bodies. The sound of music drifting in from the window mingles with the sounds they make between sobs and laughter. It feels so natural to fall into each other like this, like neon signs lighting up at dusk, like rain bringing the desert into bloom.

***

_This is not a memory._

Like everything else in that place, the “House of the New Dawn” is a name sanitized to be falsely optimistic. The House’s founders wanted to brand their vision as something groundbreaking, as if the attempted erasure of any perceived deviance in humanity had not been a war waged a thousand times over. The name is a false modulation of an image of hope. Laughable, to call dawn new. True dawn is older than life itself, the coming of light equally ancient as the fall of darkness, hand in hand with the inevitable turning of the Earth.

When the House’s occupants awake, they will become anthropologists of their past selves. The emptying of every tank of Nevermind that was stored there was incredibly potent; they do not remember their own mission, or the reason for their uniforms of white. But there are ways around the Nevermind, as Zen and Jane had discovered. Perhaps the Maryapples will rediscover the House’s puritanical mission, perhaps not. Perhaps they will discover something beautiful instead: the fire and pastel of a real dawn, and pink light on the desert. Maybe, months or years from now, Zen will recognize one of them in a crowd. She will flinch away at first, but then she will see the lack of recognition in their face. They will no longer be dressed in white. They will look a little puzzled as they move with the crowd, picking up some of the chanted slogans, apparently alone in the sea of protesters and a little cold in the pre-spring chill. Zen will approach them and offer this stranger her own jacket with a smile. “Welcome back,” she will say in answer to their confusion, before disappearing back into the crowd, her hand clasped securely in Jane’s hand.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from the spoken word part of "Pynk": 
> 
> "remember the night when I combed your hair  
> I hope I didn't freak you out when I stared  
> I donate my truth to you like I'm rich  
> the truth is love ain't got no off switch  
> so if the walls come tumbling down  
> and if the ocean really does drown  
> and if my memories never come back  
> I'll still remember where we first was naked at"
> 
> Thank you for reading, and happy Yuletide <3 I really enjoyed the chance to write for Dirty Computer (and the excuse to rewatch it!)
> 
> Comments are always deeply appreciated!


End file.
